1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a musical tone generating apparatus that generates a musical tone signal of a desired tone color in accordance with a performance data as well as to a musical tone generating computer program for generating the musical tone signal.
2. Description of the Background Art
Hitherto, in order to select a tone color of a musical tone signal generated in an electronic musical instrument, one makes use of a special tone color selection data for selecting a tone color. This tone color selection data belongs to one kind of performance event data together with a note-on event data and a note-off event data, and is made of a bank select data and a program change data. However, these tone colors correspond to tone colors of one kind of musical instrument such as a steel guitar and an electric guitar, so that different tone colors being different from one another in terms of play styles in one and the same musical instrument are not differentiated.
In recent years, selection among different tone colors being different from one another in terms of play styles is desired, and a method therefor is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 10-214083/1998. In this case, for tone colors of a guitar, sampling waveform data of guitar sounds in various styles of playing such as normal playing, mute playing, and glissando playing are respectively stored in different storage areas of a waveform memory as normal waveform data, mute waveform data, glissando waveform data, and the like in correspondence with the bank select data and the program change data. In order to select among these different waveform data being different from one another in terms of play styles, the bank select data and the program change data are inserted into the performance data, whereby the normal waveform data, the mute waveform data, the glissando waveform data, and the like are read out from the waveform data memory and reproduced by means of the bank select data and the program change data at the time of reproducing the performance data.
However, in the aforementioned conventional apparatus, if one wishes to generate musical tone signals of different tone colors belonging to one kind of musical instrument tone color and being different from one another in terms of play styles, the bank select data or the program change data must be selected every time and bank select processing or program change processing must be executed. Indeed, since the generation of such musical tone signals of different tone colors being different from one another in terms of play styles frequently takes place (in some cases, tone colors are switched for each musical note), the process of switching the tone colors disadvantageously consumes time. Also, the bank select data and the program change data for selection among different tone colors belonging to one kind of musical instrument tone color and being different from one another in terms of play styles constitute event data different from the note-on event data, thereby raising problems such as cumbersome labor or errors in the work of editing the performance data.
The present invention has been made in order to solve the aforementioned problems of the prior art, and an object thereof is to provide a musical tone generating apparatus and a musical tone generating computer program that provide shorter processing time needed for switching among tone colors of different play styles, and also allows the work of editing the performance data or the like including the switching of the tone colors to be performed easily and accurately.